Go Indians (finally, for once, it's appropriate)

Last week one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, won the National Book Award for young people's literature for his most recent effort, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." If you haven't read it, check it out. Regardless of age or race, there's something universal to his autobiographical story that's both powerful and beautiful.

I had the chance to attend one of his readings a few months back when he came through the Portland area and spoke a few miles from my office. Funny guy, in print. Funnier guy, in person (see video below). He's kind of the new Kurt Vonnegut for me - someone who addresses life's tragedies head on, often with a healthy dose of humor, which is often the only way to survive, as Kurt wrote. But more valuable than that in my eyes, with this book he seems to have fully stepped into an exciting and important role that's been foisted upon him - like it or not - for some time now: Indian role model.

Alexie is Spokane/Coeur d'Alene. He grew up not too many hours from where we live now. I used to work with a Yakama woman who knew him back before he became, oh, just one of the best writers and most famous Indians alive today. He's pretty much the closest thing there is to an Indian rock star, as evidenced by the number of us who turned out that night in Beaverton to see him speak. I'd never seen so many rez plates and Leonard Peltier bumper stickers in seven-plus years in lily-white Oregon as I did that night. And that was before I walked in and saw a crowd full of proud Indian folks. It was like going home, in a way.

So there I sat, in the back row, listening to his reading and the Q&A that followed in which he talked about the "irony of indigenous immigration" one minute and how "even the evergreens are paler in Oregon" the next, just smiling and feeling like it was, somehow, an important moment. I realized as he spoke that I was watching something I never would've seen as a kid. The only real Indian role models I knew of - beyond immediate family - were the dead ones in history books, and those all have a certain, um, bent to them.

Part of me wanted to tell him about that afterward, although it would have only completed the the fanboy-meets-rockstar-and-geeks-out moment.

In the end, my friend Casey and I did get to talk with him afterward - after she totally caught him off guard by complimenting him on his sportscoat, which he swore to us came from T.J. Maxx, which got us all to talking about places to score cheap clothes (how Indian is that?) - and he told us a funny story. Turns out about the time he met his future wife, he was trying to ask out my former colleague. Or something like that. I don't remember all the details. Like I said, I was a little star-struck.

I mean, this guy is a famous Indian role model. And he's actually alive. And there I was shaking his hand and carrying on a conversation thinking, "He's only 11 years older than I am (what am I doing with my life?!) ... I know someone who knows him ... This guy was on national television last night, albeit on 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.' (Wait, why aren't Letterman or Leno or Charlie Rose inviting the Indian guy on? Oh, yeah. He's done at least some of their shows before, too.")

So with all that going through my head, no, I didn't go all fanboy. I did get his autograph, though, and as I walked away I said a big, open-ended "Thank you." It was for the moment, for the memory and for the book I'm someday going to make sure our kids treasure for not only what it says but what it means. And if I'm lucky, when that day comes, they'll roll their eyes at me because living Indian role models - much less meeting them - won't be any big deal at all. Not anymore.